Thank you very much Mohammed! I also believe that teachers could do something to improve their teaching within the institutional limit but just thinking loud here. Teaching is for sure an individual experience, depends on the motives and efforts of professors, which I really believe, our class encourages us to start from somewhere! 🙂 Thanks for your comment.

Right, exactly! many thanks for your comment! all comments here encourage me to take action and initiative to implement some changes in my syllabus too! Many thanks again!

Many many thanks for your comment and very constructive feedback based on your own experience! It is valuable for me to hear that as having been here at VT for almost a year and not knowing much about the academic environment. And, honestly I did my PBL project for the purpose of implementing it next semester, hopefully. I am going to take action to implement my PBL! thanks again!

Hi Sara, many thanks for your comments, I really appreciate. More importantly, many thanks for your encouragement though! Maybe sometimes I am overthinking about how to make my path to critical pedagogy “perfect”. But you are totally right to see this process as an individual experience and kind of learning by doing! Many many thanks for your post!

Hi Pallavi,
I can really understand you. This is a really important issue and requires to question its underlying causes, which is, I believe, very related to the existing cultural code in the US. As an international, I am teaching for the first time this semester and really can’t wait to see my evaluations and to see to what extent students will reflect un/similar attitudes. Yet the interesting thing I experienced last semester was that one of my professor from political science, who works on intersectionality – race, gender, class- and more importantly post-colonialism, stereotyped my country – Turkey – out of the blue by labeling all Turkish people being religiously conservative enough as they stared at her once they were drinking wine in Turkey during Ramadan. This might be the case but generalization while studying post-colonialism? My question is to what extent really education/being a professor/getting a Ph.D. from “fancy” universities/studying post-colonialism(!) can really break the existing biased to the other. But, I want to hope it can one day!

LikeLike

Hi Maha! Thanks for the post and your self-reflection on critical pedagogy overall. As you know, this semester I am teaching for the first time too and wished to take our class before any teaching experience. This class does not only provide how to “start” adopting critical pedagogy in terms of PBL, creating inclusive class, how to assess but also to understand how we, both as educators and students, learn effectively. That’s why I also appreciate our class and glad that it made me make self-reflection as well. Once again, thanks for sharing your thoughts on our class:)

Hi Susan, I appreciate your post and your sincerity in raising the issue of the accessibility of laptops for students at the university, which in fact we generally tend to take it for granted. And, particularly I totally agreed with Deborah’s point or suggestion for institutional guidance for faculties to attend pedagogical seminars. I really appreciate our class in this regard but I believe each department needs to think about the certain workshops/seminars to guide their faculty in this direction. I am teaching a class this semester and I feel that my department would provide a common ground that every faculty learns together and each other.
I like your thoughtful post, thanks.

Hey Pallavi! I like how you exemplified “criticality” in relation to your research. I enjoy so much your post as I was able to hear your voice and your embodied knowledge about the community that you are conducting ethnographic research on. Your concluding point about “imagination” and linking it to education is really important. I guess, the only thing is that we need to be patient if our students are unable to think critically overnight since it might take a while.

LikeLike

Aislinn, I really enjoyed reading your post and your thinking in grading. I am in the same boat. This semester I have been experiencing teaching for the first time and thinking very parallel with you. However, one thing confuses me in grading. When sharing your experience, you said it went well as you were flexible with you considered ‘good’ work from the students and grading more based on creativity and engagement. While we ask our students to be creative and engaged, I find hard to grade fair enough. Although I acknowledge that every student has s/he unique character, it is too hard to be “fair,” to be stuck in “certain” measurement. I was wondering whether you thought about that…

Hi Aislinn! Thank you for thinking on multitasking and making us think about it, as well.
I would argue that along the line of Negin and Stephanie expressed. It is really related to how you define a task. For sure, people can dance while listening to music as dancing requires a different kind of focus. I don’t think that I think it is hard for many people to study while listening to music or while others are talking in the same room. Multitasking has been hard for me for years maybe that’s why I am thinking in this way. Many thanks again for pushing us to think!